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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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272. Faust, the Aspiring Human: A Spiritual-Scientific Explanation of Goethe's “Faust”: Faust's Penetration into the Spiritual World 11 Apr 1915, Dornach

Mephisto is sent by the earth spirit: There you have another one of the spirits that you understand. Try to understand the Lucifer that is in you, and not immediately look at the spirit of the earth!
Faust does not yet understand the text of the Gospel at all, otherwise he would stop at “In the beginning was the word”. He falters because he does not yet understand it.
It is something that one must first gain an understanding of, something that one cannot even understand according to the thinking habits of our national community.
272. Faust, the Aspiring Human: A Spiritual-Scientific Explanation of Goethe's “Faust”: The Mood of Whitsun: Faust's Initiation with the Spirits of the Earth 22 May 1915, Dornach

One could say: In the Pentecost proclamation, something is given that resonates so powerfully with the human mind that everyone can understand it, even though they only understand their mother tongue. Almost everyone feels that it contradicts what surrounds us at this year's Pentecost festival if only one interpretation of what this Pentecost proclamation can mean is given.
And it is the same with Ahriman, who crouches in a rocky cave under the right side of the thoroughly Christianized human being, under which the earth is driven upwards: the material that is driven into people, but which cannot gain strength and weakens because the power of Christ is near it.
This is what a person sees when he, I am not saying, undergoes the initiation, but when he lives the initiation. And he has reason to see the world anew. He would not utter the words he now speaks if only the person who had become guilty and who would live under the impression of this guilt in this incarnation were in him.
272. Faust, the Aspiring Human: A Spiritual-Scientific Explanation of Goethe's “Faust”: “Faust”, the Greatest Work of Striving in the World, the Classical Phantasmagoria 30 May 1915, Dornach

But now you will also easily be able to understand that what surrounds us when we are born into physical existence depends on the preceding causes, on what has happened before.
He is also not interested in following their slow erosion, but comes very soon to repair them, to really live with the conditions with which he must live, so that he learns to understand their gradual destruction. He who has never lived with earthly conditions does not understand their destruction, their dissolution.
Hermann Grimm, whom I have often spoken to you about, has pointed out that it will take a millennium to fully understand Goethe. I have to say: I believe that too. When people have delved even deeper than they have in our time, they will understand more and more of what lies within Goethe.
272. Faust, the Aspiring Human: A Spiritual-Scientific Explanation of Goethe's “Faust”: Faust's Ascension 14 Aug 1915, Dornach

This is how it should be shown: Faust is to be led under the influence of Ahriman-Mephistopheles through the aberrations of the world, but the deepest thing that is embodied as the eternal in the human breast should not be able to be corroded by that which comes from Mephisto-Ahriman.
As one who is familiar with the subject knows, really understands, so has Goethe described. However, one must immerse oneself in what Goethe wanted. One must be in his intentions, as it were, have the dead Goethe standing before you as a living being. Because some things are not so easy to understand.
272. Faust, the Aspiring Human: A Spiritual-Scientific Explanation of Goethe's “Faust”: Mystical Knowledge and Spiritual Revelation of the Nature Perception of Spirits 15 Aug 1915, Dornach

It was Goethe who really paved the way for us to understand the Christ impulse more and more, a path we refer to in spiritual science. And the beginnings of this understanding, which we have now been able to experience, will be followed by many others in the future, when we are no longer able to be present or can only be present in subsequent incarnations.
Here, too, we are confronted by spiritual beings. Helena is led up from the underworld. Faust encounters her. She is surrounded by a chorus, twelve choruses surround Helena. When Helena returns to the underworld, the chorus stands there, and at this end of the third act the chorus shows itself to us as not yet fully matured into humanity, as elemental beings.
But it does not befit us, Goethe wanted to say, to understand this spiritual reality today in the same way as it was understood in these ancient mystical systems.
272. Faust, the Aspiring Human: A Spiritual-Scientific Explanation of Goethe's “Faust”: The Realm of Mothers. The Glorious Matter 16 Aug 1915, Dornach

I have already pointed out that if we want to fully understand the human context, we must point out that the human being is first of all connected to the macrocosm as a whole human being, just as the macrocosm is reflected in the human being as the microcosm.
I have said: We touch here on a momentous mystery. — And it is only natural that these things can only be hinted at. He who wishes to follow them up must undertake a meditation on what has been suggested. He will then find what he still desires, even if it takes a little time.
Now I have something to say here that is difficult to understand – not so much for the human intellect as for the entire human soul, I believe – but which really must be understood one day.
272. Faust, the Aspiring Human: A Spiritual-Scientific Explanation of Goethe's “Faust”: Wisdom – Beauty – Goodness Michael – Gabriel – Raphael 19 Aug 1916, Dornach

And curiously enough, he even blunts the will by not focusing on the development of the will, on the impulse of the will, but on what underlies the impulse of the will: sympathy and antipathy. — There is much to be said for looking at things this way.
And he might have sensed something of how little he would be understood. For Goethe sensed already, from the end of the 1790s, that something must come like a spiritual science if what he instinctively sensed and felt as world-wisdom and world-beauty and world-strength was to be fully understood.
Echo from the souls to whom he read the first scenes of “Faust,” which he wrote when he was twenty years old: the first echo. But understanding at that time – for even that time is now already gone in the time of materialism – understanding, however, for crossing the threshold with a character like Faust, understanding for appealing to the earth spirit, which “weaves and lives in the tides of life, in the storm of deeds”.
Human and Cosmic Thought (1991): Introduction
Translated by Charles Davy

It should be emphasised that what is presented here is not a theory spun out of intellectual effort, which may rightly rouse our scepticism, but is based on Rudolf Steiner's research into the soul and spiritual realities underlying our existence. The numbers seven and twelve and their cosmic connections are not abstract theories or analogies, but spiritually empirical facts.
152. Occult Science and Occult Development: Occult Science and Occult Development 01 May 1913, London
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

And only when the possibility of understanding Spiritual Science is held back through Ahrimanic influence in the soul does that understanding remain unattainable.
It may be said that every individual who will apply the original forces within his soul, undisturbed by Ahrimanic influences, can understand everything that is revealed from the spiritual worlds; hence in a certain sense it is possible for every human being to unfold consciousness of the spiritual worlds by undergoing occult development.
Among the spiritual movements of our time, Anthroposophy as it is here understood will be the least fanatical, and the one that proceeds most decisively from objective considerations.
152. Occult Science and Occult Development: Christ at the Time of the Mystery of Golgotha and in the 20th Century 02 May 1913, London
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

The human mind always looks for a standard of comparison by means of which things can be understood, but what is incomparable defies all comparison and because it is unique will be very difficult to comprehend.
There are, of course, good and bad definitions—some are comprehensive, others less satisfactory. In order to understand the things of the earth, definitions may be helpful; but when it is a matter of understanding realities—above all super-sensible realities—one cannot define, one must ‘characterise’; for then it is necessary to contemplate the facts and the beings from every possible vantage-point.
And now think of the laws of Nature. A great deal can be understood by studying them and in future time much more will be learnt, but we must be mere dreamers if we do not realise that the understanding of life as such is an ideal attainable only through actual development, never through the mere study of these laws.

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